Malevolence: an Ode.

Odes, on several Subjects. By Robert Alves, A.M.

An allegorical ode in seven fourteen-line stanzas, subtitled "Being an allusion to ill-natured Criticism." At the time of publication Robert Alves was teaching at the grammar school in Banff. The imagery of his ode to Malevolence is more Spenserian than is usually the case in such performances; the middle stanzas develop an allegory in which the Muse figures as Una, or the Lady in Comus: "Yet oft thro' loneliest den or dell, | Unhurt hath holy Virgin sped; | No savages 'gainst Chastity rebel, | Nor dare profane the gem which Heaven hath sacred made" p. 27. The poet had been a pupil of James Beattie, who is saluted in the concluding stanza. Not seen.

Edmund Cartwright: "Of the pieces in this collection, the principal is a philosophical poem, intitled Vicissitude, An Ode; 'the intention of which is to describe the variety and consistency of nature's plan both in the physical and moral world.' The remaining pieces are, Malevolence, an Ode, Ode to Night, Ode to Hygeia, and Ode to Wisdom. They are none of them wholly destitute of merit. The versification is easy, and, if allowance is made for some few defective rhymes, for the most part harmonious" Monthly Review 61 (July 1779) 76.

Hence, fiend, to where in caverns dun
Thee Envy bore to wan Despair,
When Phoebus check'd his burning throne,
And Chaos rul'd the stormy air;
There darkling pine alone;
There fret thy heart, and tear thy ragged hair.
Go where no smiling beams of Morn
Were ever seen to dwell,
But Melancholy, midnight-born,
Weeps in the shades of hell.
Or go where Night and Silence reign,
And hoary towers delight thy sight;
There in dim covert with the owl complain;
There curse the dawning day, and call for endless night.

Who heeds the praise or scorn
Of Envy, black Tartarian maid?
Or those whom doom'd to Ignorance forlorn,
Dulness detains benighted in her shade?
Their pathless way to tread.
Thro' the lone weary wildering maze,
Where glimmering gleams at best the gloom bespread,
And Truth but shines by starts upon the gaze,
But Knowledge guides th' ingenuous mind.
Where godlike Truth, whom she adores,
Resides in purest glory shrin'd,
With Virtue, in immortal bowers:
Fame standing near waves high th' applausive bay,
And strews with many a wreath the flowery-cover'd way.

Hail days of heavenly light!
Hail fruitful in eternal lays!
When every Science starts from shades of night,
And all the Arts shine forth in all their blaze.
To damp th' high-born Muse,
In vain does Malice shed her poison'd dews;
Since every Muse, and Muse's son,
Still brightening like the Morn,
In Glory's dazzling paths shall run,
Thro' ages yet unborn.
Tho' vapours hide the golden Sun,
His living torch again he soon displays;
And tho' they shade the land where late he shone,
On other lands he shines that bask beneath the blaze.

O B***e, could thy Muse of fire
Transport me to th' Aonian grove,
Where all the Muses wake the lyre,
And hand in hand the Graces rove,
Then would my verse foretell,
(For Inspiration thence my breast would swell)
What bards on wings of boundless Fame,
High as the stars shall fly,
And Time resound their sacred name
Till Time himself shall die.
But, ah, my trembling strains forbear,
Such mighty bards, such mighty song;
Not all bold Pindar's god-like fury share,
Or roll the rapid flood of sounding verse along.